Question of the Day

Have you been impacted by the government shutdown?

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - A former assistant teacher at a private school in Concord has been sentenced to at least 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage student.

The Concord Monitor reports (https://bit.ly/1MvM6kY) that 31-year-old Donald Levesque was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to two counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and two counts of manufacturing child pornography.

In a letter read in Merrimack County Superior Court, the now 17-year-old victim said he met Levesque as a sixth-grader at Shaker Road School, which serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade. He said Levesque asked him for sexual photos when he was in eighth grade and later repeatedly forced him into sex acts.

“These types of things happen because kids trust adults in their life. I’d always been taught as a child to do what the teacher told you to do, to trust the adults in your life,” he wrote. “I will always think of this nightmare whenever I’m asked why I don’t act like a normal teenager or why I can’t take a joke. He deceived me into thinking this was all my fault.”

According to prosecutors, Levesque assaulted the boy 10 to 15 times from early 2013 to April 2014. School officials asked Levesque to resign in February 2014 after learning he had inappropriate communication with a student outside of school hours, but they did not notify police or parents of other students. Levesque was arrested in October 2015.

Levesque spoke only to answer “yes” when asked whether the state’s summary of the allegations was true. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to pursue federal child pornography charges.

In a separate case, Phillips Exeter Academy said Wednesday that a second teacher has been fired for having sexual contact with a student decades ago. The elite prep school notified parents, staff and faculty that Steve Lewis also has been barred from campus and all school events. Another teacher, Richard Schubart, who admitted to sexual misconduct with two students, was forced to resign in 2011.